U.S. Charges Five In Largest Credit Theft, Hacking Case

U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday they have launched the country's largest hacking fraud case and charged five men in Russia and Ukraine with credit card theft resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for a number of multinational companies.

U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday they have launched the country's largest hacking fraud case and charged five men in Russia and Ukraine with credit card theft resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for a number of multinational companies.

The indictment named four men residing in Russia and one man in Ukraine.

It also cited Albert Gonzalez as a co-conspirator. He is serving 20 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to helping mastermind one of the biggest hacking fraud schemes in U.S. history, helping steal millions of credit cards. It was not immediately clear how those cases overlapped with the ones announced on Thursday.

In addition engaging in credit card theft, the indictment said that the defendants stole log-in credentials from Nasdaq after playing malicious software on the company's computers around May 2007. Nasdaq has not previously disclosed the breach, though it reported that it was the victim of an attack in 2010.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Paul Fishman plans an 11 a.m. (1500 GMT) briefing on the charges, a spokesman said.